Self-improvement quotes

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”

― Ernest Hemingway

“Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”

― George Bernard Shaw

“A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.”

― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“When you see a good person, think of becoming like her/him. When you see someone not so good, reflect on your own weak points.”

― Confucius

“There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.”

― Aldous Huxley

“How noble and good everyone could be if, every evening before falling asleep, they were to recall to their minds the events of the whole day and consider exactly what has been good and bad. Then without realizing it, you try to improve yourself at the start of each new day.”

― Anne Frank

“Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.”

― Jim Rohn

“We first make our habits, then our habits make us.”

― John Dryden

“You are essentially who you create yourself to be and all that occurs in your life is the result of your own making.”

“When you concentrate your energy purposely on the future possibility that you aspire to realize, your energy is passed on to it and makes it attracted to you with a force stronger than the one you directed towards it.”

“As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world - that is the myth of the atomic age - as in being able to remake ourselves.”

― Mahatma Gandhi

“Everything is practice.”

― Pele

“you can measure the size of a person by what makes him or her angry”

― Dale Carnegie

“You willed yourself to where you are today, so will yourself out of it.”

― Stephen Richards

“If you argue and rankle and contradict, you may achieve a victory sometimes; but it will be an empty victory because you will never get your opponent's good will.”

― Dale Carnegie

“Hatred is never ended by hatred but by love,”

― Buddha

“Bill Gates (and his successor at Microsoft, Ray Ozzie) are famous for taking annual reading vacations. During the year they deliberately cultivate a stack of reading material—much of it unrelated to their day-to-day focus at Microsoft—and then they take off for a week or two and do a deep dive into the words they’ve stockpiled. By compressing their intake into a matter of days, they give new ideas additional opportunities to network among themselves, for the simple reason that it’s easier to remember something that you read yesterday than it is to remember something you read six months ago.”

― Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation